Neuroamerhttps://neuroamer.com
An MD-PhD student's blog about Neuroscience, Neurology, and Psychiatry
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1 http://wordpress.com/https://s0.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngNeuroamerhttps://neuroamer.com
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/Neuroamerhttps://feedburner.google.comIntroductory Journalism Textbooks from the Top 5 Undergraduate Journalism Programshttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Neuroamer/~3/I8T4c1K-UW4/
https://neuroamer.com/2018/05/12/introductory-journalism-textbooks-from-the-top-5-undergraduate-journalism-programs/#respondSat, 12 May 2018 00:22:44 +0000http://neuroamer.com/?p=3974As I’m now working at an NPR station, but I was never formally trained in journalism, I decided to look up what I missed out on. Here are the introductory textbook’s used by 5 of America’s top journalism programs:

Anyways, if you’re interested in teaching yourself journalism, this might be a place to start. This probably also doubles as a list of books to give as a gift to a journalism major or a young aspiring journalist.

The Journal of the American Medical Association, or JAMA, is launching a podcast app designed to help doctors to listen to educational content and take quizzes on what they learn.

By listening to these podcasts and taking the accompanying quizzes, medical professionals could earn Continuing Medical Education (CME) credits, which are needed for licensing requirements.

JAMA is advertising podcasts as a way for busy people to earn these credits: “Morning time. Commute time. Lunchtime. Workout time. Your time.”

Potentially this app will work on one of podcasting’s biggest strengths as an educational tool, allowing listeners to multitask and learn on the go. And, by incorporating quizzes the app may compensate for one of its weaknesses — the ease with which one can space out and miss important details from a piece of audio.

Likely the popularity of this tool will depend on the quality of the podcasts produced. I’ve heard a fair share of medical podcasts where people just read out articles and listing facts in monotone voices. However, the most widely shared and popular learning tool when I was a medical student was Dr. Goljan’s audio lecture series. (I’d wager Goljan has had more impact on medical education than any other doctor in his generation.)

A successful podcast, that can hold a tired person’s attention as they work out or commute will require an effective host like Goljan that can use some humour and flair to regain listener’s attention before key points and transitions and make points stick in their mind.

I strongly believe that the university system and medical education are sorely outdated. At hundreds of schools across the nation, similar lectures are given year after year, often by professors only lecturing out of an obligation to their department. The majority of schools now record these lectures, and at many schools, the majority of students, don’t attend class, they just watch the lectures so they can pause, repeat, slow down or speed up the content.

It’s time we decide these subjects are important enough that we devote the resources to make high-quality courses that can be shared between schools and across the world. Courses that not only incorporate the experience of top medical lecturers but also storytellers and documentarians. They should be founded in psychological theory, and variants could be tested using A-B testing and quizzing to optimize medical education. They should be accompanied by a comment section where the top questions and resources could be posted, voted upon, discussed.

Unfortunately, medical education, especially pre-clinical education, is often an after-thought — an obligation, not a priority. Schools are unlikely to take on a project like this, but perhaps a new generation of supplementary educational materials, like Goljan’s lectures, or the Pathoma video series could emerge — if they did, whoever made them would do the world a lot of good and make a lot of money off of the tens of thousands of allied health students looking for any advantage on their high-stakes exams.

]]>https://neuroamer.com/2018/02/14/jama-launches-podcast-app-whats-the-future-of-medical-education/feed/0neuroamerJAMA podcastshttps://neuroamer.com/2018/02/14/jama-launches-podcast-app-whats-the-future-of-medical-education/First Public Radio Featurehttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Neuroamer/~3/nxg7n7kIuRk/
https://neuroamer.com/2018/02/05/first-public-radio-feature/#respondMon, 05 Feb 2018 20:03:03 +0000http://neuroamer.com/?p=3956A little over two months ago, I drove all the way from Northern Virginia to Garden City Kansas to start a job as a reporter at High Plains Public Radio.

They say the best pilots in times of peace, aren’t the best as in times of war. It’s called the Yerkes-Dodson law — people function optimally at a certain level of stress, but that level depends on the person. I can barely step on a plane, let alone imagine piloting one. I’m just not wired for anything more stressful than a “high stakes” standardized test.

I’m a sad sack of anxious genes. A cowardly convergence of two lines of pacifists, with genes that never would’ve survived a war. Genes that created a brain so tightly wound, I can’t even take SSRIs, the mainstay of treatment for anxiety.

I kept thinking I would grown up and this would go away. But here I am, thiry and avoidant avoidant — unable to handle conflict, confrontation, even just someone else’s disappointment.

It feels like I’m supposed to keep on taking on more responsibility, to get busier and busier, and then add kids on top of that.

But I just want to shrink away, shirk all responsibility and live a “simple life.” A simple life that never really existed and never really will. But I also know that such a life would bore me and even at times in my life where I’ve had little responsibility these feelings didn’t go away.

At the same time, I’m doing fine. Learning new things, meeting expectations, working hard.

In the words of Fred Shero, I’m a duck — calm above the water, and paddling like hell underneath.

And I’m sure everyone to some extent feels this way. But to what extent? To my extent? And if they felt the way I do, what would they do?

That I’ll never know.

I should probably start doing CBT again.

]]>https://neuroamer.com/2018/02/01/i-am-a-sad-sack-of-anxious-genes/feed/0neuroamerYerkes-Dodsonhttps://neuroamer.com/2018/02/01/i-am-a-sad-sack-of-anxious-genes/“Yo Dawg, I herd you like Podcasts, so I put podcasts in your podcast so you can listen to podcasts while you listen.”http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Neuroamer/~3/BQNhoPPKJ9A/
https://neuroamer.com/2017/09/01/yo-dawg-i-herd-you-like-podcasts-so-i-put-podcasts-in-your-podcast-so-you-can-listen-to-podcasts-while-you-listen/#respondFri, 01 Sep 2017 09:40:42 +0000http://neuroamer.com/?p=3921I made a podcasts about podcasts, but it’s not like those other podcasts about podcasts.

Selects, is a show for people looking to listen to something new that actually want to hear the podcast not an interview with the host. I asked independent and up-and-coming producers to “show me what you got.” Hosts cut down trailers or picked the best 10 minute segments that best represent their own shows, and Selects is a collection of the favorite submissions I received.

(AP Photo/Mark Tenally)

On Saturday, Nats batter Adrian Sanchez turned in towards a pitch as he attempted to bunt. But the 96-mph pitch headed straight for him, and the baseball struck him in the chest. He clutched his chest and collapsed to the ground where he remained for several minutes. An athletic trainer ran over, probably terrified of commotio cordis — a deadly injury caused by an unlucky strike to the chest in front of the heart.

Commotio cordis, Latin for “agitation of the heart,” is a bizarre condition where when a physical blow to the chest hits the heart during a particularly vulnerable moment in the heartbeat, it can cause a sudden heart attack.

The heart attack isn’t due to physical damage; in fact, the blow usually doesn’t even damage the bones overlying the heart. Instead, scientist’s think that the mechanical energy generated from the strike affects proteins such as ion channels in the heart, causing them to function aberrantly, which ultimately leads to ventricular fibrillations.

Normally, heart cells in the ventricle normally are electrically synchronized so they contract together, and this unified contraction collapses the heart chambers and pumps blood. But in commotio cordis, the impact to the chest disrupts that synchronization. Different heart cells start contracting at different times from one another, and the heart can’t fully contract and efficiently pump blood. Instead, it fibrillates, with different regions making small ineffectual contractions. Defibrillators, those pads first-responders attach to the chest to “jump-start” the heart, work by sending an electrical signal over the heart which is strong-enough to re-synchronize the heart cells, so they again contract together and pump blood.

Sanchez, the Nats batter who was stuck by the pitch Saturday, recovered, and played out part of the rest of the game, even getting a base hit, before they sent him off to the hospital for monitoring, but not everyone is so lucky.

The very same day a 20-year-old Milwaukee Brewers minor-leaguer Julio Mendez was also struck by a pitch. An eye-witness report given on reddit said his breathing stopped, and trainers performed CPR as they waited for paramedics to arrive. The paramedics defibrillated the heart and took him to the hospital, where the Washington post reported today that he was in in a “critical but stable condition.”

Commotio cordis is a rare condition, but these two incidents are representative as younger players seem to be more vulnerable. According to the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), “it occurs primarily in children, adolescents, and young adults, most often during participation in certain recreational or competitive sports.” And of recreational and competitive sports, baseball is by far the most common cause of commotio cordis.

These deaths in young athletes may be preventable, according to that same NEJM article, “A direct relation between the hardness of the ball and the likelihood of ventricular fibrillation has been demonstrated in the laboratory, and lethal arrhythmias occur less frequently when the balls used have been manufactured for reduced hardness.” However, even softer baseballs made out of rubber as opposed to twine and cork have still caused commotio cordis.

In addition to recommending softer balls, the NEJM article suggests training young players to turn away from pitches coming at them, and also making defibrillators more available because quickly restarting the heart increases the chance of survival from any heart attack, including one induced by commotio cordis.

It started in high school with a thought experiment: if you rewound your life and woke up again this morning with no memory of what had happened today, would you do the exact same things?

Please stop and think about this scenario for a second. If you reset to this morning with your memory wiped, would you behave the same way?

If you said yes, then let’s rewind a week, a month, a year, all the way back to when you were born, your life is predestined. That’s it, we don’t need to talk about brains or consciousness, just follow simple logic.

Okay, so what if you said no? So even with the exact same personal history, and the exact same events going on around you, you made different decisions? Given the same inputs you choose different outputs? Then it seems like, you’re not making the best decisions given the scenario, you’re just behave randomly. And behaving randomly, doesn’t seem like free will. You might not live in a pre-determined world, but you live in an utterly random one.

But it feels like there’s free will, doesn’t it? Voluntary Actions

It feels like we have free will because it seems like some actions are under our voluntary control, while others we have no control over at all.

I think a lot of what people think is voluntary, just has to do with to what degree that action can be modified by language or thoughts.

Actions feels voluntary if, when we want to do it or stop doing it it’s able to. However, a lot of actions fall into gray areas like bad habits, compulsions, unconscious tics. It’s especially hard to tell whether or not someone else is able to control a behavior — for example, is a good friend who’s an alcoholic really able to stop drinking if he or she just wants to enough? We know some alcoholics stop drinking, which could make you think it’s possible for anyone to stop drinking at any time if they just cared enough, but at the same time we know other alcoholics keep drinking until the day they die, or will keep relapsing after recovering. (In fact, in many ways getting over withdrawal is a cakewalk [though withdrawal from alcohol can cause seizures and be deadly], relapses are the real and insidious danger of addictions.) It’s really impossible to know if an individual can quit now, or later, given their situation.

So is it worth moralizing and lecturing your alcoholic friend? Maybe your shame is exactly what they need to overcome their drinking, maybe it’s counter-productive. That’s an empirical question — or finding out whether an average shaming to an average person is anyways.

Maybe your words can tip them over the edge into the realm of voluntary realm, if not today, then tomorrow when they sober up, or maybe your words will help by set off a complicated biochemical cascade in your friend’s brain, but their effects won’t manifest into a gain of control for months. Thinking about this same phenomena less reductively, maybe they won’t really hear what you say now, but they’ll think back to it later in a moment when it’s what they need to think about.

Knowing what’s voluntary and what isn’t is important for the criminal justice system. If someone’s brain is compelling them involuntarily to violence or crimes, we need to figure out how to stop them from doing harm, but like Sapolsky says, what good is moralizing or shaming them? And you can imagine that if there was a way to detect who was at risk of committing voluntary crimes there would be a temptation to do something about it preemptively. On the other hand crimes that are at least partly voluntary, can be controlled and prevented through education and other social systems.

But when it comes to moral judgement, in the end it doesn’t really matter what’s “voluntary” and what’s not, because the words and thoughts that lead to “voluntary” actions themselves were predetermined or random. I don’t know how this doesn’t just end in nihilism.

Personally, the way I get by with this terrible life philosophy is to pretend it doesn’t apply to me because otherwise you get stuck in really circular, unproductive thinking. I do essentially try to act though as if what I’ve outlined above is true of everyone else in the world. I do think we’re conscious, I think we all have feelings, but I think we’re all pinballs bouncing around a chaotic world.

The one silver lining, is I do think it’s increased my compassion for people — we’re all in this together, even people you disagree with in every way, or people who’ve done terrible things. But on the other hand, some studies have shown that people may use a belief in predeterminism to morally let themselves off the hook (Vohs and Schooler, 2008). Well, if spreading this anti-fw gospel is amoral, I’m going to let myself off the hook because I didn’t have a choice in the matter anyways.

Hopefully people much smarter than me have figured a way out of this logical black hole, and have arguments convincing enough to take me out of it’s orbit. Maybe I need to read Sam Harris’s book on the subject:

Etymologically, schizophrenia comes from Greek skhizein and phren mind, so literally means “split mind,” and in popular culture, the term ‘schizophrenic,’ is often is used to refer to someone with multiple personalities.

However, schizophrenia has nothing to do with multiple personalities, instead it refers to a chronic mental health disorder with no cure that can involve hearing voices (auditory hallucinations), delusions, and disorganized thoughts.

It affects roughly 1% of the population, often appearing in early adulthood, and the symptoms can vary from person to person. These symptoms are usually split up into three categories: positive, negative, and cognitive. And, these distinctions are important because the medications used to treat schizophrenia can reduce positive symptoms, but give little relief to the “negative” or “cognitive” symptoms.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, “positive” symptoms include hallucinations (usually auditory such as hearing voices), delusions, thought disorders and movement disorders.

While hallucinations and delusions can be some of the most frightening to patients and their families, “negative” and “cognitive” symptoms can be just as disruptive to work or social life.

“Negative” symptoms include: flat affect (expressionless face and monotone voice), decreased feelings of pleasure, decreased speaking, and difficulty initiating or sustaining activities. “Cognitive” symptoms include problems with executive function (planning and self control), trouble focusing and paying attention, and problems with short-term or working memory. It’s important to note that people with schizophrenia usually experience some but not all of these symptoms.

So, where did the “paranoid” part come from in Scaramucci’s rant? To explain this we need to get into how these diseases are diagnosed.

Psychiatrists diagnose diseases like schizophrenia based on the symptoms that patients experience, using a standardized book call the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders usually referred to as the DSM. As research into psychiatric diseases progresses and medicine becomes increasingly based on evidence as opposed to clinical experience and theory (sorry, Freud), the American Psychiatric Association periodically updates the DSM. However, without strong biological mechanisms to explain and categorize diseases, their borders and sub-categories are somewhat arbitrary (but useful nonetheless in standardizing diagnoses between doctors and prediction where a medication is likely to help a patient).

Old versions of the DSM split up patients with schizophrenia into subcategories: paranoid, disorganized, catatonic, or residual. According to these older versions of the manual, paranoid schizophrenics would experience delusions or auditory hallucinations are present–usually persecutory d (e.g. the CIA is after me) or grandiose (e.g. I’m the greatest poet who ever lived), but paranoid schizophrenics would not suffer from thought disorders, disorganized behavior, or flat affect.

However, in 2013 the latest version of the DSM, all sub-classifications of schizophrenia were eliminated. According to clinical psychologist C. E. Zupanick, “The rationale for doing away with these subtypes is they are not stable conditions, and have not afforded significant clinical utility nor scientific validity and reliability.” So the categories were done away with because patients would shift from one category to another and they didn’t seem to help with diagnosis or treatment.

So is Reince “a fucking paranoid schizophrenic,” probably not, and calling him one is an insult to people who suffer from this debilitating condition. First of all, most people who suffer from mental illness want to be treated as people first and labeled by their condition second, so it’s more polite to refer to someone as a person with Autism than an Autistic. Second, in general, many with mental illnesses ask that their diseases aren’t trivialized in everyday speech. When you’re feeling down you aren’t “depressed,” if you like to stay organized you aren’t “OCD,” and if you’re distrustful and suspicious about what’s going on in the Whitehouse you aren’t “schizophrenic,” you’re paying attention. And this isn’t the first time someone’s been labeled schizophrenic just because they’re being sane in an insane place.

Some jobs (though mostly ones that require a lot of experience) are posted in the classifieds of Nick Quah’s hotpod newsletter.

Pro tip: jackets can act as a mobile studio, and radio journalists are very resourceful and committed to their jobs.

2. Make something great

Pitching stories to shows you love can be a good way to meet producers and editors and show them how you work and think about stories. They might keep you in mind the next time something opens up on their show.

But, getting your foot in the door and getting your pitch read is hard. Knowing how to pitch is an art in itself. The biggest advice I can give is you need to pitch a story not an idea.

Alternatively you can go DIY and produce your own podcast or story. If it takes off and gets heard by the right person, they may want to collaborate or hire you to work on your project. Whether or not the “be so good they can’t ignore you” philosophy still applies in the modern content-saturated world, I’m not sure. But, by making something good, at the very least you’ll have something to put on your resume and list as a clip that might just clinch that job.

You’ll want to create some kind of show reel that quickly shows your editing skills, style, and voice on mic, which can help give employers a sense of you, what you’re all about, and what you can contribute to their project.

Here’s a now-embarassing one I made after my Science Vs internship:

3. Be persistent

The advice I’ve gotten from a few people, and from the comic book Out on a Wire is to be persistent — eager but not desperate. Let the people who make stuff you love, know that you love it. Pitch them stories, ask them if they need any help, and repeat every few months. When a position opens up, they’ll know you aren’t BSing your cover letter. They’ll know you’ve listened to their show and understand it’s voice.

Famously, Alex Blumberg loved This American Life so much he started as Ira Glass’s assistant. Stephanie Foo started her own storytelling podcast called Get Me on This American Life. Know what you want, know why you want it, and then figure out how to pitch yourself and your story.

Take all of my advice with a grain of salt, I lucked out and managed to get my foot in the door, working as an intern for Science Vs, but I struggled with finding a next step.

Update: After months of under-employment, moving back home with my parents, starting a couple shitty podcasts, and doing any tape-sync I could reply quickly enough to get, I landed a job as an entry-level reporter at an NPR member station in the middle of nowhere, western Kansas. So my advice is: hope you have some kindof safety net you can lean on, cast a wide net, and hope you are in a life circumstance where you can relocate.

The advice I’d get repeatedly from successful producers was essentially, “Yeah, starting off in this field is difficult, but if you want to make radio podcasts, you just have to put up with it.”

Hold on tight to any opportunities you get and build up your experience and skills. There’s a steep learning curve, but if you can get past it as of now there’s demand for experience producers that can independently lead a project.

For me it’s helped to try to reset my expectations. I’ve been trying to change my mindset, accept that it’s just part of the field, and imagine myself as an actor getting rejected from audition after audition.

When I applied to college and grad school, I had some sense of where I stood based on grades and test scores, and, while I worried about slipping through the cracks, I knew that statistics were on my side. Now, applying to jobs in a field where there might only be a couple of dozen positions open at any time that receive hundreds of applications, the cracks I worried about slipping through have grown into chasms, and I feel like I’m on a tight-rope. And I’m not even walking on the tight-rope because I’m not making any forward progress. I’m just dangling from it by one arm and trying to hold on as best I can and hoping someone sees something in me.

Well, that was awfully melodramatic. The bright-side is that making and distributing podcasts has an incredibly low barrier to entry, so you don’t need to wait for permission. If you think you’re qualified for the job apply. If they don’t take you prove you’re qualified for the job by making something great. But keep in mind, it’s not going to be easy when you’re starting out, so persist, hang in there, and keep making stuff.

Finally, everyone’s route is different. If you have the time and means you might want to think about going to journalism school (Columbia seems to have a strong program by their representation at Gimlet) and audio-specific programs like Salt or Transom are short and highly-esteemed. Lastly, attending Third Coast seems like a common path for newcomers to network with the people they’re interested in working with.

]]>https://neuroamer.com/2017/07/27/how-to-get-a-job-in-podcasts-and-radio/feed/2neuroamerScreen Shot 2017-07-27 at 7.11.22 PMScreen Shot 2017-07-27 at 7.21.35 PMtenorhanging-by-a-threadhttps://neuroamer.com/2017/07/27/how-to-get-a-job-in-podcasts-and-radio/Hosting the 7/21/16 “sciparty” on Twitter:http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Neuroamer/~3/d9eGNRoLaoE/
https://neuroamer.com/2017/07/21/hosting-this-weeks-sciparty-on-twitter-in-30-minutes/#commentsFri, 21 Jul 2017 16:37:09 +0000http://neuroamer.com/?p=3643Every week Dr. Karen Ring organizes a “sciparty” on twitter, where a scientists or science communicator who is active on twitter takes over the @sciparty account and answers questions for an hour on twitter.

Today, I hosted the science party and received a lot of questions about my decisions to pursue and drop out of an MD-PhD program and my experiences working on the podcast Science Vs and trying to get a start in science journalism. I’m going to try to share the questions and answers here, since it can be tricky to navigate them through twitter.

Me: I started in research as an undergrad studying electrosensory processing of the Little Skate Raja Erinacea.

Interestingly the primary sensory area of their brain for electroreception is structured like mammalian cerebellum. As these fish move around and breath, they stimulate their own receptors, as if every time you breathed your vision filled with static. but just one synapse into the brain most of these self-generated signals are canceled out. Skates learn how movements affect receptors.

After undergrad, I worked as a technician in a lab that used mouse models to study genes thought to cause psychiatric diseases.

After undergrad, I worked as a technician in a lab that used mouse models to study genes thought to cause psychiatric diseases. I knew I loved science but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, so I worked as a tech while I debated going to grad school.